


Hanzo's Moving Castle

by MarieJacquelyn



Category: Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Cursed Amelie, Cursed Jesse, Did I mention that there's going to be porn, Fluff and Angst, Gabe as a spirit of darkness, Hanzo gets it on A LOT with a manticore, Hanzo is a Furry, Howl's Moving Castle AU, Lots and lots and lots of porn, M/M, Manticore Jesse, McHanzo - Freeform, Multiple Universes Colliding, Wizard Hanzo, but we already knew that, let's just curse everybody
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:39:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarieJacquelyn/pseuds/MarieJacquelyn
Summary: In the land of Ingary, where such things as spells and dragons really exist, it is quite a misfortune to end up on the wrong side of a magical curse. Everyone knows that wizards and witches are much better at putting curses on people than they are at breaking them. If you do end up cursed, it is quite an undertaking to find another person proficient enough, and willing, to break the spell.Jesse McCree had been cursed and considered himself quite luckless for the experience.





	1. Chapter 1

In the land of Ingary, where such things as spells and dragons really exist, it is quite a misfortune to end up on the wrong side of a magical curse. Everyone knows that wizards and witches are much better at putting curses on people than they are at breaking them. If you do end up cursed, it is quite an undertaking to find another person proficient enough, and willing, to break the spell.

Jesse McCree had been cursed and considered himself quite luckless for the experience.

Jesse had grown up well enough, as the youngest of three brothers. His middle brother, Woodson, had gone off and joined the army to find adventure and risen to the rank of Officer within a year. His eldest brother, James, declared that he was quite happy with the simple life. He opened a bakery, married his childhood sweetheart, and they were currently expecting their fourth child. Jesse, as the youngest, had been declared the best suited to seek his fortune through magical means. He’d had a knack for trickery and spellwork from a young age and was inclined to agree with this fate, so off he had gone. Quickly he had fallen in with a group of people that most of Ingary would consider more than a little unsavory, but they too had suited him.

Following that, all he had ever wanted to do was his job. He was good at it, or so he flattered himself.  

At least he’d been good at it until he’d ended up on the wrong side of a rather terrible curse.

“You are wandering too far south again,” said his traveling companion from where she was sprawled across his back.

“I thought you were sleeping?”

It was night out and the sky was covered with stars. Anyone in their right mind would be tucked away in their warms beds. This is what made traveling by night the safest for the two of them - they were much less likely to be found by a wandering shepherd if they limited their movements to the night. That had happened twice before they decided on this form of traveling. The first man had nearly died of heart failure and the second had pulled out an ancient rifle and tried to shoot them. Neither had been very enjoyable.

“I was until you stepped in that hole back there.”

“This place is half holes and all of them want to break my damn ankles. We might want to stop until the sun comes up a little bit. Even I can hardly see a foot in front of my nose.”

Amélie Lacroix sat up and spat to the side to clear his hair from her mouth.

“I am not certain we can avoid the delay. Already we have been gone for too long and found nothing. The rumors that follow us have been...disturbing and I cannot rest easy knowing what fate awaits us.”

“Fuck fate,” Jesse growled. The ground had begun to slope upwards beneath him and he struggled up the hill, just barely able to make out the summit against the night sky. “You said this way, so we’ll go this way until we find somebody who can help us. We’ve been travelin’ for months, Amy. Don’t start doubtin’ us now.”

“I know.” She laid herself back down on his back, her face hidden in his mass of hair. “I should not. Cannot. Not when we have come so far. I can only hope that we find them soon, this person. Neither of us can last much longer in this state.”

“Speak for yourself.” Jesse started to pant, using rocks at footholds as he climbed, careful not to dislodge his rider. “I’m fine. Stronger than ever. Hell, this might even be an improvement.” His back foot slipped into a rabbit hole and he swore, clinging to the ground to keep from falling in deeper. “And I’m definitely more handsome than I ever was before this,” he groaned, pulling his foot free.

Almost there. He’d rest when he was at the top.

“Of course you are,” Amélie said against his neck, but her voice was weary. They’d had this conversation before. They’d had it a hundred times, when their strength was failing them. When people turned and fled from them. When the nights seemed too dark to carry on another step.

When hope seemed like a thing that other people had. Not them.

“We are nearly there, Jesse. A little further and we will stop for the night. These lands are too treacherous for us, no matter how skilled you claim to be.”

They reached the peak of the hill and Jesse collapsed with a drawn-out groan, his feet and ankles aching. Amélie’s weight wasn’t much, but months of traveling and a poor diet of whatever they could hunt or steal had taken their tole on him. Amélie’s fingers skated over his ribs as she slid off of his back and onto solid ground.

“Watch out for holes,” he warned her, only half sarcastically. “This place has to be half rabbit and mole tunnels.”

She didn’t reply as she walked ahead enough to see down the other side.

“There is a village in the valley below. It looks rather quaint.”

“Anywhere is quaint compared to Kingsbury,” Jesse said to the dirt. “Do you want to go down and see what you can dig up or just go around it?”

Amélie was silent for a moment. Now that he didn’t have to stare at the ground, Jesse too could see the faint lights of civilization. It wasn’t as small as he had expected from Amélie’s descriptor - more of a small city if the size and spread of it was anything to go by.

“Neither tonight,” his traveling companion finally sighed, much to his relief. “We both need rest. Tomorrow I will go down and see what I can learn from the townsfolk about any magic users in the area. Perhaps this is the place we seek.” She didn’t sound convinced and Jesse knew that she only suggested it for his sake.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But we’ll find out tomorrow so there’s not much point in stressing about it now. Let’s grab some shut eye.” He rolled onto his side in the dirt, offering her his side and the dirty serape wrapped around his neck. Amélie tugged it free and wrapped it around herself like a blanket before settling against his side in a familiar ritual. She didn’t even complain about the fur anymore, though she woke up covered in it every morning.

“We will fix this,” she said as she curled her fingers into Jesse’s mane. “We will break this curse and then we will go back and save Gabriel.”

“Yeah.” Jesse looked out across the dark valley, where the town slumbered. His heavy heart and aching body made it hard for him to put any conviction behind his voice. “We’ll figure somethin’ out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy your short intro chapter, my loves. Soon we'll be in a realm of monsters.


	2. Chapter 2

“Why me?” Jesse asked the dragon. “I’ve done a lot of shit in my life and I’m not proud of a fair bit of it, but somehow this isn’t where I saw my life goin’.” 

Amélie would laugh her ass off if she ever found out that the notorious Jesse McCree met his end in the mouth of a giant stone dragon, slurped down like a cool drink on a hot day and cussing the whole way. The day had started with so much promise too. It was a crying shame it was going to end with his death. 

“Thought dragons were things out of story books, but that’s rich comin’ outta my mouth,” Jesse muttered as he took a couple of very quick steps backwards. The setting sun made a halo behind the dragon’s head, catching veins of silver and jade that ran through its stone body like rivers. Its eyes were gemstones as large as he was and they glittered with an alarming intelligence as they tracked him. “I don’t know what you’re guarding, Friend, but I don’t want any part of it. I’m lookin’ for a wizard, not a tussle with something as large and clearly carnivorous as yourself.”

There was no way he could run fast enough to make it to safety. The valley floor stretched for a half mile in every direction before it turned into dense forests and craggy mountain slopes. It would take less than a tenth of that for the dragon to stretch out its long neck and snap him up. 

Wet earth sloughed off the dragon’s head as it lowered itself down to his level, still eyeing him. Jesse took another step backwards, his heart pounding in his chest like a gun. Was that an expression of interest or hunger? Did dragons play with their food before they ate it, like cats torturing mice before the end came with long teeth and hot, fetid breath?

It hadn’t been there when Jesse first arrived in the valley, muddy up to his ankles and full of resolve.

There was a wizard nearby and he was going to be the man who figured out where the fellow had bolted himself up. Find them and  _ make them _ break the curse. Of course, he’d privately hoped that asking nicely would do the trick. Making wizards do anything they weren’t inclined to was an exercise in futility. He knew this since nobody had been able to make him do anything in years and he’d been a very good wizard. 

So down to the valley he’d gone, muddy and determined, with his eyes fixed on the decidedly odd-looking castle that sat at the bottom. 

“The town is called Market Chipping,” Amélie told him when she returned from her excursion into the town the previous day. Jesse had spent a couple of very boring hours split between pretending to be a rock when airships would pass over and chasing off the birds that kept trying to pull out his hair to line their nests with. “Even the name is old-fashioned. The entire place seems built up around farming and, more recently, factory labor. They also have a sizable market and I took the liberty of securing us both lunch.”

Jesse’s lunch turned out to be an entire roasted chicken with crispy seasoned skin. The cavity had been stuffed with tender new potatoes and chunks of carrot and he chewed on it with mindless ecstasy for several minutes while Amélie picked at the crust of her vegetable and beef pie. The hood of her traveling cloak kept her face in shadows, which seemed odd to Jesse on such a nice day. 

“Not hungry?” He licked his chops to get the flecks of chicken caught there. “Feels like years since we ate somethin’ other than rabbit. What’s gone and set you off?”

“Other than your atrocious accent?” She asked, but there was no bite to her words.    

Jesse bit a chicken bone in half and chewed it up. “Can’t all be fancy pants mages from Kingsbury. Come on Amy, spit it up. No wizard? We lookin’ in the wrong place?” 

Amélie left off her systematic destruction of the pie crust and rubbed her fingers between her eyebrows, not seeming to care that she left crumbs behind. “There is a wizard,” she replied. “I had words with those who might know - travelers the like. No one has been to visit them though, nor could anyone tell me their exact location.”  

“No one to visit a wizard?” Jesse asked in surprise, pausing in his attempt to get a shard of bone out from between his teeth. “Now that’s just weird. Most’ve them have a line of folks waitin’ to knock on the door and buy a spell. What’s so wrong with this one that nobody knows where to find them?” 

“It seems that their location...moves.”

“Moves? Like they live in a tent out here on the moors?” He glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see something of the sort decorating the slopes behind him, complete with tiny flags and a ‘Wizard’ sign. 

The pastry crust was picked up and slowly transformed into crumbs again. “No, not a tent. A castle.”

“A castle,” he repeated. “A moving castle?”

“So it would seem.”

“The only reason I’m not suggesting we go down and find you a doctor to look at your head is because I’d be run out of town. Also because that’s not the strangest thing we’ve run across. Prize for that still goes to - “

“Do not mention it, I beg you. I want to preserve what little appetite I have left.” Amélie made a slicing motion with her hand to cut him off that made her hood fall off. 

Jesse eyes narrowed. “You used your Sight!” He said accusingly as his companion hurried to pull cloak back into position. 

“Yes,” she snapped at him. “It was necessary. No one in that forsaken town knew anything useful and I decided that the necessity outweighed the price.”

“This time!” Jesse snarled. “What about next time? Or the time after that? You’re  _ dying _ , Amélie. Your skin is turning gray and you’re losin’ bits of yourself every time you use the Sight. How long ago did your sense of smell go? Can you still taste?” 

Amélie swallowed hard and slid a small piece of the crust between her dark lips. “Only a little,” she said softly. “And I feel cold even in the sunshine. You’re right - I am losing pieces of myself every time I use my magic, but what choice do we have? You struggle as much as I do, don’t deny it.”

“We aren’t talkin’ about me.”

“Don’t talk about how you turn into more of a beast and less of a man with every passing week? Can you even walk on your back legs any more, Jesse?” 

He could, but it hurt his back something fierce to do it so he turned his head away and ripped a leg off of his chicken in lieu of a straight answer. “Neither of us is doing too great, but at least you can keep yours from getting worse. Promise me you won’t use the Sight again, Amy. Not unless it’s an emergency.” 

It had taken longer than that to wheedle an agreement out of her, though neither of them could agree on what exactly constituted ‘an emergency’. In Amélie’s eyes, they’d been in a state of emergency since they’d fled from Gabriel’s side. Jesse was determined that only the threat of imminent death or dismemberment counted.

Looking into the dragon’s eyes, Jesse decided that this did indeed count as an emergency. Sadly he and Amélie had parted ways, with him to seek out the wizard and her to Market Chipping to keep her ear to the ground for news. Not that her Sight would have done him any good in this situation - the only thing she would have Seen was the tip of his tail as the dragon ate him up.

“Now look, I’m sure we can come to some sort of understanding,” he said, trying to use his very best ‘harmless country bumpkin’ voice. “I wasn’t expectin’ anything like you when I moseyed down here, so we don’t you just dig yourself back down into the dirt and I’ll turn my ass right around and go back the way I came?” 

Another step backwards, but the dragon’s head advanced just as far. 

“Clearly whoever is in that castle doesn’t want anybody to come calling for a cup of sugar if they’ve got you to watch the place. Must be workin’ on something important, so I won’t bother -”

The dragon exploded into motion before Jesse could do more than blink and caged him in jaws large enough to swallow a house.

_ That’s it, I’m dead. Dragon chow. No more saving the world for this dumbass, he had to go and get himself eaten by a lizard the size of the Grand Palace. Fitting.  _

He waited for the feeling of sharp teeth piercing him, his eyes screwed shut and his teeth clenched. Any minute now his life would end. 

Any minute.

There was the sound of a throat clearing. 

Jesse opened his eyes and peeked out from under his paws. 

It wasn’t a dragon gullet in front of him, but rather a stone wall with a door set in it. That door was propped open and in it lounged a wizard. He had to be a wizard - he had a billowing blue coat embroidered with lightning bolts and dragons and his hair swept around his sharp, angry face in a way that could only be achieved with a little magic. 

“Why,” the wizard asked in a deep, cold voice, “Is there a manticore cowering on my front step?”     

“Great question,” Jesse managed. “Definitely not lookin’ to eat anybody if that’s what you’re wondering.” 

The door shut on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of all of the magical moving castles in the land, he had to wander into that one...
> 
> If you need me, I'm usually on Tumblr at mariejacquelyn.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

It took Jesse exactly twenty three minutes and fifteen seconds to realize that he was trapped.

Five minutes had been spent sitting in front of the door, waiting expectantly for it to be opened back up once the wizard decided to be more reasonable. Obviously he wasn’t the reasonable sort because the door had remained stubbornly shut. Knocking hadn’t brought anyone to answer, and applying his shoulder against the wood had sent him bouncing backwards like a ball when the protective spell on the door activated. Clearly there would be no getting in through the front way, so he’d begun to look backwards instead with a half-formed idea of regrouping with Amélie, but that had proved problematic as well. Scratching at the unforgiving stone of the dragon’s mouth hadn’t gotten him anything but dulled claws, and all of his shouting and pleading with the monster had gone seemingly ignored.   

With a heavy sigh (and a few choice words that his mother would have given him a smack for) Jesse collapsed onto the cold stone.

He was definitely trapped.

In some ways this was better than the situation he’d been in earlier - being stared down by a behemoth of a dragon and trying to talk his way out of turning into a snack. In others, it was much, much worse.

“Option one,” he said out loud as he rolled onto his back and held up one finger that was halfway between a human’s finger and a lion’s toe. “The door stays shut and I die of thirst in three days. Bad option. I’m ignorin’ that one. Option two.” He held up another finger. “Mister Wizard gets pissy about me lyin’ - heh, _lion_ around on his front step and hexes me halfway to Sunday.”

Another bad option.

“Three. I make enough of a ruckus that he opens up the door again and I charm him into takin’ the spell off.” That one got a very skeptical finger raised, since the fellow (though pretty enough from what Jesse had seen) looked like he’d rather set himself on fire than be charmed by someone like Jesse McCree.

“Four. I ask this very kind and generous manticore-eating dragon to let me go on my merry way _or I won’t shut up until the sky falls!_ ” This last one he shouted very loudly so that the owner of the mouth could hear him. Rock dust rained down from the ceiling as the dragon made a truly dreadful noise that might have been a laugh, but the teeth didn’t open. So much for that idea.

Jesse observed his fifth finger and blew out a heavy breath. Once upon a time it might have been ‘wait to be rescued’, but that was less likely than all the rest put together. His only friend was miles away and couldn’t know about the trouble he’d managed to get himself into. The others…

“They have their own problems without adding yours to them,” he told his thumb. “Figure something out on your own or you deserve to die in here.”

Fifth option - wait for someone to come out and then politely ask them to let him out of the dragon. It could take a couple of hours, but what else did he have to do with his time? Amélie would know what to do about the dragon and the rude wizard, he just had to make it back to her side.

Of course, knowing Amélie she would probably have some very unflattering things to say about him when he told her that he let a construct and a closed door keep him from his goal.

A growl bubbled up in his throat at the thought. He wasn’t a coward or weak-willed. Far from it - he’d killed dozens of the worst kinds of creatures to walk the world. Dark wizards, monsters, and criminals had all met their ends at his hands and now here he was, getting his tail in a twist over one wizard who had the nerve to shut the door in his face. This was on him. He’d gotten himself into this mess and he’d be the one who got himself out of it.

Jesse pushed himself to all four and then up onto his back legs, balancing his poorly-distributed weight by resting on his armored scorpion tail. Something in his back ached unpleasantly, protesting his shift to being bipedal, but he ignored it.

There was moss on the floor of the dragon’s mouth, slippery wet stuff that grew up the backs of the dragon’s teeth like a carpet and filled in the sunken areas between higher stones so that it looked more like a woven carpet than the floor of a cave. It was soft under his toss as he slowly paced the width and length of his prison and filled his nose with a delicate, crisp scent.

“Damn near got a garden growing in here,” he told the dragon. “Might be a bit more homey with a fountain and somewhere to sit. A swing or a bench for folks to rest on while they’re busy contemplatin’ their fates.”

None materialized and he didn’t have the power to conjure one up from the stone, so instead he paced. Stone, moss, more stone. There were small gaps in the dragon’s teeth that let in enough light to see by, but not much more than that. It was a thoroughly dull prison and Jesse had grown bored by his third circle. The wood of the door was only slightly more forgiving than the stone against his back as he leaned against it, tawny arms crossed over his chest and the barb on the end of his tail twitching in irritation. His stomach growled, reminding him that it had been more than a few hours since he’d eaten that wonderful chicken.

“No bench, no food, no water. Hell, even real prisons give you a bit of readin’ material to pass the time! I’m liable to die of boredom long before anything else, and I’m sure the smell of me rottin’ away will put you right off the idea of gobbling up any other hapless fool who comes wandering by.”

The dragon grumbled with the sound of boulders rubbing against each other and Jesse squawked when this made a rock the size of his fist come loose from the ceiling and bounce off his head. He pressed himself as flat against the door as he could, baring sharp teeth at the cave.

“A’right, enough! It’s not enough to be stuck in here, now I get to be battered to bits!”

_Click._

Jesse froze. It hadn’t been the sound of stone that echoed through the cave. He looked slowly down at his hand, afraid that it he moved too quickly he might cancel out whatever magic had just been cast. As he’d struggled to keep away from any further rocks his hand had closed around the door knob and now, as he watched, it slowly turned with the motion of his wrist.

The door was unlocked.

“Course it is,” Jesse said, torn between amusement and pure disbelief. “I’m never living this down, am I?”

Thankfully the dragon didn’t reply. Jesse gave the door a tentative tug and stepped aside to let it swing silently open. A wash of cool air poured out from the dark space inside, tugging at his mane with invisible fingers.

 _Come in_ , it whispered. _Come in._

“No way to go but forward,” Jesse murmured, but it took a moment for him to release the doorknob and take that first step inside. Two more and the door shut behind him with no hand to push it.

Jesse held his breath as his eyes adjusted to the near darkness inside. The air was still and silent. There was no hint of the outside world - no sunshine or sounds from the dragon outside. His breath blossomed white with every exhale.

He was standing in a shallow pit lined with stone. The were three pairs of shoes set carefully off to the side, and a closet with sliding doors. There were a scant handful of coats inside when he hooked a claw in the handle and pulled it open, but not the fancy one that the wizard had been wearing. He sniffed at them but got nothing from it except that there were at least two different wearers and one of them chewed bubblegum.

“Hello?” He called softly, turning back to the dark entrance. “Anybody home?”

There was no answer, but he hadn’t really expected one. Wizards were notoriously mysterious and dramatic. Likely the man was just waiting for the right moment to emerge from the shadows and spell Jesse into something much worse than a manticore.

“I hate wizards,” Jesse decided on the spot. “If I get my old self back I’m never casting a spell ever again. I’ll go off to the country and grow potatoes and be as non-magical as dirt.”

It was a shame he knew absolutely nothing about growing potatoes.

Jesse let the back of his hand brush against the wall as he crept further inside. The floors were all wood, worn in places from years of foot traffic. They squeaked gently beneath his feet, announcing his progress forward with chirps and groans.

There were no open rooms for him to peek into as he cautiously explored. Instead the whole place had been broken up into private room divided by sliding wood and paper doors painted with images of foreign landscapes and monsters the likes of which Jesse had never seen before. Giant wolves and blood red demons battled across an entire long wall. Jesse tugged open the screen with part of the wolf on it, wincing when one of his claws sliced through the paper like butter, and peeked inside.

An empty room looked back at him, the floor covered by woven mats. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture inside, and a single unlit lantern hung from the dark wood beams of the ceiling.

“The hell…?” Jesse said aloud. He turned and opened another screen, this one depicting the twisted, furious face of a boar whose hide bristled with spears. It was as empty as the first.

Room after room he searched, leaving tiny holes behind in the paper screens, and none of them held so much as a chair.

“Not even dust,” he said as he looked back behind him at the long hall filled with half-open screens. No light, no warmth, no nothing. He might have thought the whole place abandoned if not for the wizard he’d seen only an hour earlier and the shoes by the door. “Anybody home?” He called, louder this time.

Again there was no reply and Jesse felt the fur along his spine bristle as his nerves grew. There was something damned unnatural about this whole place, and not just that he’d gotten inside by getting swallowed by a dragon and walking through a door in its throat.

When the sound of skittering claws came from the floorboards under his feet Jesse was so high strung that he almost screamed. He managed to turn it into a manly sort of yelp at the last minute, but his dignity took enough of a blow that he thought it was lucky that the castle was deserted. No witnesses.

Whatever was under the floorboards had frozen at his yelp, but as soon as the sound had faded away (cut off by Jesse clapping both hands over his mouth) it came again. A rat? In a place as spotless and bare as the castle it seemed unlikely that any kind of pest would be tolerated. Sadly it was also the only sign of life he’d witnessed since he’d set paw in the place, so he took it as some sort of sign and dropped to all fours, tracking the noise as it set off down the hall and around corners. Painted eyes on the paper screens watched him as he passed.

“Don’t you even think about magic-ing yourselves to life or you’ll get more than a couple holes,” he snarled at a set of fox demons on one. They didn’t move or blink, but Jesse thought he heard the sound of soft laughter as he continued on his way.

The sound lead him through a maze of halls and empty rooms. The castle itself was mammoth, but he didn’t want to risk searching through the empty rooms for a window to orient himself and possible lose the soft scratching of whatever it was he was following. They passed at least three staircases leading to further floors, and though Jesse gave them curious looks he also resisted the urge to sneak up in search of the owner of the place. Better than sound he knew than the emptiness he didn’t.

The closed door came as such a surprise that Jesse ran head-first into it and flopped to the floor with a ‘thump’ that echoed through the halls, clutching at his aching head.

“That’ll teach me to keep my eyes down,” he groaned, rubbing at his head through the mess of curly hair.

The door opened not onto an empty room like he had expected, but into a large, shadowed space with half-visible fixtures. The floor was ice cold tile under his feet and though he turned his tufted ears back and forth and pressed them against the floor, the scratching noise had gone.

“How do you like that?” He mumbled and felt around on the nearest surface until he found what he hoped was a gas lantern. It sprang to life under his hands when he fed and ignited it, the flame dancing merrily in its glass cage and shedding a speck of light on the room.

It was a kitchen.

The space was ruled over by a huge island covered in butcher block, with sliding doors in every side to hold an amazing variety of cookware. Jesse touched a corner of it reverently as he passed and leaned down to sniff at the wood, only to be disappointed. There was no trace of oil or spices or food prepared on it - only raw wood and a whiff of the same perfume that had been on the coat in the front closet. The fat iron stove was ice cold and there were no ashes in its belly to indicate that it had ever been used for cooking, despite the stack of firewood and book of matches sitting next to it.

The miles of wooden counter were spotless, empty of any kind of drying herbs or baskets with onion or the usual paraphernalia that usually cluttered up cooking spaces. Two plates and forks were drying next to a marble wash basin and that was the extent of any evidence that the room was used at all.

“All the stuff for proper living, but not a sign of it anywhere. It’s like a doll house,” Jesse mumbled as he stood on his hind legs again and used a match to light the lanterns hanging along the ceiling. The light helped to chase away the pall of disuse that seemed to hang over everything.

A jar labeled ‘tea’ sitting on a carved shelf rattled, but this time Jesse managed to contain himself and didn’t shout or scream. The noise was almost welcome after the eerie silence. He stepped towards the stove and carefully reached out to pluck the lid off the top of the tea jar. It was either a rat or some uneasy spell waiting to fire into his face. Whichever it was, he was ready for an end to the tedium that was this blighted castle.

It was neither.

“Well now, look at you,” Jesse cooed, plucking the jar off the shelf and cradling it between his hands. “Aren’t you a pretty little thing. What’re you doin’ in there, huh? You don’t look much like tea.”

The miniscule blue dragon, no bigger than corn snake, raised its head out of the tin and squealed at him like a kitten. Jesse could see little white teeth in its mouth through its whiskers, but they were so small that he knew they couldn’t make it through his fur. He offered it one of his fingers and grinned when the creature sniffed eagerly at it and then began to chew on the end of his claw.

“You’d be best off finding something tastier to chew on. Come on, let’s get you out of there.” He took his claw away and stuck two fingers down in the jar so that the tiny dragon could slither up them and around his wrist, where it held on like a very fashionable and warm bracelet, blinking at him with neon eyes. “Was that you under the floor?”

It chirped, but it was hard to tell whether it was an affirmative or not.

Jesse gave the tea tin a little shake. With the dragon out of it, the loose leaf blend on the inside rustled and released a pleasant smell, like peppermint. His stomach growled loudly, demanding that he find something, anything to fill it with.

“Shame I’ve never been much of a tea drinker,” he told his new companion. “Don’t suppose you have any coffee in here?”

The dragon squealed and took flight off of Jesse’s arm, making his eyebrows rise up so high that they threatened to follow suit. It had no wings to speak of, but somehow managed to twist its way through the air like a blue corkscrew, its tufted tail wafting behind it until it caught its claws in another shelf and pulled itself up onto it somewhat ungracefully.

It looked down at Jesse, who applauded to be polite.

That seemed to appease the dragon because it twisted around and began to claw at another cannister, one that was turned away from Jesse but that he realized said ‘Coffee’ when he lifted it down.

“Aren’t you a clever - now hang on just a sec.”  

There was another dragon in the coffee tin, but this one was fast asleep with its head half buried in the beans. It cooed and rolled over when Jesse gave the can a little shake, exposing its pale underbelly.

“How many of y’all are there? Is there another one in the sugar too?”

The coffee dragon jerked awake at the sound of his voice and hissed at him, puffing up its mane and the frill along its back until it looked like a cotton ball. Jesse shook the tin again and it slipped on the beans. “None of that now. I didn’t do a thing to you except wake you up, so mind your manners. Get on out of there.”

The second dragon chose to bite him instead of using his fingers to climb out, but it hurt less than a pin prick so Jesse simply let it hang limply off of his finger while he set about tossing a couple pieces of firewood and a handful of kindling into the belly of the stove. The dragon, apparently put out by the inefficiency of its attack, eventually released its grip on him and floated up to sulk next to its companion on the top shelf.

“See? That didn’t get you anything but bruised pride. Doesn’t cost you a thing to give a nice ‘hello’ to new folks before you go about filling them with holes,” Jesse said conversationally as he lit another match and tossed it in after the wood. It caught on the kindling and it took less than a minute for that to spread to the heavier logs. “Am I going to find ten more of you little bits if I dig around?”

Both dragons shook their heads.

“Just you two?”

They nodded.

“And you’re smart too. Just for the sake of makin’ things easy on us both, you’re Tea,” he pointed at the first dragon, who tapped its front legs in a rapid, excited tempo, “and you’re Coffee.” The second dragon snorted, but didn’t make any noises of displeasure.  

“I’ve had a hell of a day, so I’m going to make a cup and lay off worryin’ about the wizard for a few minutes,” he told them as he checked the black kettle on the stove. “This sort of stress isn’t good for the body.” The kettle had an inch of water in the bottom, but Jesse didn’t know how long it had been sitting stagnant in there so he erred on the side of caution and poured it out before refilling it with fresh from the tap. It coughed and sputtered for a moment before coming on properly, but the water was clear and tasted clean when he slurped some from his cupped hand. The dragons both watched him like he was a circus curiosity they’d never seen before, their claws crossed in front of them.

The stove heated the previously cold room and both Jesse and the dragons were drawn to it like moths to a lantern. Jesse stretched out next to it, content to bask for a little while with his head pillowed on his soft arms. Maybe the castle wasn’t so bad after all. It had been a long time since he’d been warm and comfortable with the prospect of a hot drink in the future. It wasn’t something he would have considered a luxury before he’d been cursed.

He grunted when Tea and Coffee dropped down on top of him, apparently finding his pelt a better resting place than the shelf above the stove. They slithered into his mane and Coffee found one of his lion ears to chew on. Jesse didn’t have the heart or the energy to make them move.

The fire crackled and popped cheerfully and his eyes grew heavy as he watched it dance behind the thick grate. He would make his coffee in a minute. For now he was happy to lie there and rest his feet with the warmth of the stove seeping through his fur and into his bones and two tiny dragons purring in his mane.

One minute turned into two and two turned into three, and the soft whistle of the kettle went unnoticed by Jesse, whose soft snores filled the castle’s kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If y'all haven't seen the art the Vimeddiee did for this fic, you guys seriously need to check it out <3  
> https://twitter.com/Vimeddiee/status/798917478332174340/photo/1


	4. Chapter 4

There was someone in the room with him and they’d been pacing for the last five minutes, observing him from every angle without touching. His ears had twitched at the first creak of feet on the wooden floors outside the warm kitchen and, expecting a certain antisocial wizard, Jesse had done the wise thing and made like bearskin rug. Docile, dead, and unthreatening.

It wasn’t the wizard, however.

This person smelled like sugar candies and metal.  

“Did we get a new foot mat?” 

There was a squeal from next to his ear and the disconcerting feeling of something slithering through his hair and down his spine. Jesse knew that if he hadn’t already been awake, that sensation alone would have startled him right through the ceiling. 

Jesse cracked open one eye and regarded the pair of bare feet rockinging back and forth near him, close enough that they could have prodded him with their toes. Definitely not the wizard - they were too small and feminine for such an imposing figure, and he had a sneaky feeling that the man wouldn’t be caught dead without proper footwear on. He didn’t seem like the type, more the pity. 

“Oh, so it’s a dragon bed.” A pause.  “An ugly dragon bed. I could have just made you a pillow if you wanted something to lie on. You didn’t have to drag in that dirty thing.”

A second dragon stirred to life in the depths of Jesse’s mane and twice coiled around his ear, chirping and cooing like a nesting bird. The one on his back quickly returned and Jesse heaved a great sigh, resigned to his new life as a perch. It could have been worse - blue dragons were much better than field mice or any number of other small creatures who could have made his messy hair their home. 

“Oh, you’re alive.” The bare toes dug into his side. “Don’t even think about biting me. I’ll hex you so hard your testicles will fall off.” 

Female, witch (or at least playing at being one), not local judging by her accent. Jesse opened his eyes again, fully this time, and glanced over to see who had decided to join him in the warm kitchen. 

The witch was a size that Jesse would call ‘less than a mouthful’ now that he could fit pretty much everything into his maw. Skinny legs, skinny arms, long brown hair that fell in front of her shoulders. White and pink trousers gave way to the bare feet that were still poking him in his visible ribs and her cape was a mix and blue and purple that made his eyes hurt to look at for too long. She didn’t match the ‘simple country folk’ look that abounded in these parts - there was a wickedness to her smile and a spark in her eyes that just screamed ‘try me, I dare you’. 

“Lady, I wouldn’t bite you even without you threatenin’ my bits,” he groaned as he rolled onto his side and indulged in a full body stretch. His tail uncurled so far across the floor that it knocked into the cabinets on the other side of the room, making the dishes in them dance and rattle. “I’m pretty fond of them, even if they’re not seein’ much use lately.”  

The girl hopped backwards onto the counter and pulled her legs up, well out of reach of his claws. “That’s going on the list of ‘things I didn’t need or want to know’.”

Realizing that going back to sleep wasn’t going to be an option, Jesse did his best to smooth down his mane and clambered to his back feet. His back protested and popped like a firecracker before it settled into the unnatural shape. One of the dragons (he wasn’t sure which) decided that this was the most fun to be had in the whole castle and shrieked loudly, clinging to his ear with the tiny claws as they adjusted to the new height. The other simply readjusted itself on the top of his head and, judging by the tiny whistling sound, went right back to sleep. 

“I’m starving,” Jesse declared. “What time is it?” 

The witch blinked owlishly at him, as if she was still trying to process exactly what was going on. “Six in the morning. Who let you in?” 

“Perfect time for breakfast,” he declared, ignoring her question. “Do you want tea or coffee?” In an attempt to put some barrier between the witch and his testicles, Jesse pulled off the serape tied around his neck and slung it around his hips in a wrap that helped to cover his delicate bits. There was no need to scandalize anyone this early on.

The witch raised her hand in a gesture of ‘why me’ that still made Jesse flinch, expecting a spell. “Coffee,” she finally sighed.  “There’s a container-oh, you know already.” 

Jesse shook the tin at her and smiled in what he hoped was a friendly manner, sharp teeth aside. It was comforting work, digging through the well-organized kitchen until he found cloth filters for the coffee. He was used to roughing it - even before he’d been cursed he’d preferred to spend his time outside, usually with a book and a smoke to keep himself entertained. The past few months had made him truly appreciate the ability to go inside when he wanted something, whether that thing was a soft bed or a bite of food. He and Amélie had done the best they could between foraging, hunting, and sometimes flat-out stealing food, but neither of them had exactly prospered. His gaunt frame was a testament to that.

Neither of them spoke again while he worked and the silence, though not exactly comfortable, was one that he could deal with until after he had something hot to sip on. 

_ I hope that Amélie found somewhere nice to stay in town _ , he thought to himself. She would have taken tea and stirred in a general spoonful of honey. “Cream? Sugar?” He asked over his shoulder.

“Black,” said the witch and accepted the hot cup he passed her, careful not to touch his furry fingers or curved claws. Jesse’s own cup had a delicate curled handle that he couldn’t fit any of his fingers through, so he wrapped his entire hand around the cup and savored the warmth of it as it seeped through his sore paw pads. Too much walking on all fours with the wrong sort of callouses hadn’t been his idea of a good time.

They assessed each other over their cups, judging how much of a threat the other was. Now that he had a moment to, Jesse could smell the magic coming off of his drinking companion - not playing at being a witch after all. Her magic had a heavy scent, like liquid metal and lightning. It could have been curse-centered, but he wasn’t positive. Curse-users smelled sharper, more bitter. 

“You want some breakfast?” He finally asked and had the satisfaction of seeing the witch’s eyes light up. 

“You can cook? Seriously?” She asked, unable to keep the eagerness out of her voice. There were twins shrieks of enthusiasm from his mane.

Jesse laughed. “Everybody’s got a hobby. I need somethin’ to do when I’m not terrorizing villages or whatever monsters do in their spare time. Keeps my hands - paws - busy.”

Since it didn’t look like the witch was going to toss him out on his ear or hex his balls off, he might as well make up a bite for both of them before the wizard decided to show his face. He’d made it abundantly clear that Jesse was not welcome and the least he could do was spare a meal before he turned out his unwanted houseguest.

The hard part would be deciding what he felt like making. Everything sounded delicious and the small cup of coffee had done nothing but awaken his stomach. Before he’d been cursed it was claimed that he had ‘a healthy appetite’, which was code for having five meals a day when he could get them and never leaving a scrap on his plate. It was a far cry from the raw vegetables and stolen meats he and Amy had been living off of. 

“What’s your name, kid?” He reached up and pulled a massive cast iron pan off of the hanging rack. When he sniffed it he smelled neither oil nor spices. It was either brand new or nobody in the massive castle had ever decided to break it in.

“Hana Song, and I’m not a kid. I’m a Master Witch back home.” 

“That so!” Jesse was impressed despite himself. There was oil in a clear jar on the counter and he poured a generous splash into the pan and swirled it around, cradling the iron handle in his oversized paw. “You can’t be more than twelve. Pretty clever for a pipsqueak.” 

“I’m nineteen, you overgrown housecat! I made Master at sixteen, so yeah. Pretty clever.” There was the sound of hissing steam from behind him and Jesse couldn’t help but imagine that it was coming out of her ears. “So who let you in? It wasn’t me and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Master Shimada. He hates visitors.” 

Master Shimada, huh. It wasn’t a name Jesse had ever heard of, which was both surprising and not at the same time. Witches and Wizards could be amazingly antisocial, but the majority at least had a write up in the college registry. Shimada wasn’t a name he’d ever come across in there, so either the man kept a very low profile or was an unregistered illegal magic-user. Two Master Users in one castle could either be very good for him or very, very bad. 

Jesse mulled that over as he padded to the cold box, hoping for eggs and some kind of meat, but he was sorely disappointed when he pulled it open - completely empty except for a block of magic ice. He shut it again and turned back to the witch, still holding the oiled pan. 

“The door let me in - don’t know much beyond that. There wasn’t exactly a welcome committee when I got here so I’ve got about as many ideas as your icebox has edibles.”

“You really are a savage.” Hana huffed her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s a magic ice box - you have to tell it what you want. It only does raw stuff though. Nothing cooked or mixed. Master Shimada enchanted it to connect to some village market and then he pays for whatever comes through.”       

Jesse regarded the ice box with a new appreciation. Teleportation was complicated magic, and to compress it into something this small and well-contained would take a lot of raw power. “Maybe he really is who I’ve been hunting for,” he mumbled under his breath as he set down the pan and propped his paws on his hips. 

“What?”

“Never you mind.” Something spicy would compliment the coffee nicely, with spices and vegetables to go along with it. He knocked on the door of the ice box and it thumped hollowly. “Morning in there. Can I get some spicy sausages, fresh eggs, handful of chili peppers, corn, tomatoes, mixed bell peppers, avocados if you’ve got ‘em, yellow cheese, couple of potatoes, and mushrooms? Oh, and an onion.”

“You don’t ask for much.” Hana hopped down off the counter and stepped over his tail on her way to make another cup of coffee. “You’ll have to give it a minute - that’s more than we usually ask for.”

“Do tell.” Jesse’s eyebrows were closer to spots than actual brows now, but he still managed to raise them. “Don’t tell me neither of y’all can cook. That’d just be a crime with a piece of magic like this sittin’ around.” 

With her back to him Jesse could see that there was a line of embroidered white rabbits running along the bottom of Hana’s cape. “We’ve got better things to do than cooking! You know, like magic? That thing that keeps this whole place running?” 

“Yeah, but nobody can live on raw veggies for that long.” There was a loud ‘ _ clunk’  _  from the ice box that made him turn away from where Hana was glowering at him over her coffee cup. A fat package of sausage wrapped in butcher paper fell out when he pulled it open and landed on the floor with a wet sound. It had been pushed aside by the pile of other foods that now filled the box, puzzle pieced in with little care about what ended up on the bottom.

“Next time I’ll ask for one thing at a time,” Jesse grumbled as he carefully extracted a bowl of brown eggs out from under a sack of flour. Luckily only one of them had shattered, but the gooey inside and shell pieces had got all over the other eggs. “If there is a next time. So what do you usually eat around here if neither of you geniuses can cook?”

“I could cook a little bit!” Hana said, making no move to help him move the food from the box to the counter. She jumped over his tail whenever it swung near her, keeping well away from the barb. “I can make rice and boil vegetables and do eggs. Sort of. The stove hates me. Anyway, I’m usually too busy to cook.” 

“Pity,” Jesse admitted as he used a claw to pick bits of broken eggshell out of the bowl. Both tiny dragons, clearly more interested in investigating the possibility of food than in his hair, drifted out of his mane and down onto the counter. Coffee promptly stuck its head into the egg bowl and started to slurp at the broken yolk while Tea gummed at one of the chili peppers. “Well, I’ll get you fed before your master tosses me out on my ear. Least I can do for letting me crash on the floor.” 

Hana reached out and flicked her hand in a gesture that Jesse recognized as a spell. Half a second later he was presented with three different kinds of knives, all of which floated in front of him politely, waiting to be used. 

“Mister Cat, if you can actually cook something edible I’ll make  _ sure  _ he doesn’t toss you anywhere.” 

That, it seemed, was the end of it.

It took some practice, but Jesse eventually came up with a system that worked for him. Chop  the vegetables. Keep the spicy ones away from the dragon. Chop the sausages. Keep Coffee out of his coffee cup. Heat the oil in the pan and find the spices. Make sure Hana wasn’t trying to magic him behind his back. 

The smell of browning sausage with onion and garlic was almost enough to make him swoon. His stirred it all around in the pan with a wooden spoon and used the handle to keep the dragons from climbing right in and adding their own flavor to the mix. 

“So where’d you learn to cook?” Hana asked as she leaned around one side of him, almost as curious and eager as the dragons to see what was happening in the pan. He felt a brief jolt of pity for the girl. Having a master who couldn’t feed his student was one thing he’d never had to suffer. 

“My Ma started me on it. I’d go out and drag home a brace of rabbits as a kid and she taught me how to dress and stew them up.” He scooped up a double pawful of chopped vegetables and potato chunks and tossed them down onto the sausage. The meat fat hissed cheerfully, spitting everywhere, but he couldn’t feel it through his fur. “Then my master got me into baking and desserts and stuff. Couldn’t always practice when we were on the road, so I’d haul along cookbooks to read. Better than half the fiction crap that fills up libraries these days.”

He could feel the girl’s eyes drilling into him accusingly. “You’re cursed! I thought you seemed weird for a manticore.”

Steam billowed as Jesse gave his wrist a flick and tossed the sauteing mix high into the air and then caught it all in the pan again. “What, because I’m not runnin’ around eating folks and makin’ a general nuisance out of myself?” 

“That and you have a really stupid accent and manticores don’t talk.”

Jesse looked under his arm and gave Hana a hurt look. “A real stupid - who exactly is the one makin’ breakfast for you here, huh? I’m sure those two would eat your part of it without much fuss.” 

Tea and Coffee both nodded rapidly, more than happy to sacrifice their living companion in the name of more food. 

Hana held up her hands in a gesture of surrender, but Jesse still caught her rolling her eyes. “Okay, okay! It’s only a little bit stupid.”

“That’s more like it.” 

The potatoes were tender when he tested them with a claw, so he quickly cracked open the rest of the eggs and poured them into the hot pan. The started to fluff up the moment they hit the oil and he worked quickly, using his spoon to break up and distribute the yolks. 

“I’m so hungry I’m going to die,” Hana announced from next to him.

“Hold your horses, kid. Normally I’d make a nice pico to go over this, but I don’t feel like takin’ the time to chop all that up. There we go!” He crowed, pulling the pan off the heat and slapping it down onto the middle of the island. “Nice scramble to get the day started.” 

It smelled as divine as it looked. Colorful vegetables and browned chunks of sausage broken up the fluffy eggs and he was pretty sure all four of them - people and dragons - drooled a bit when he cut the first pie-shaped wedge free and deposited it onto the plate Hana held out to him. 

“There you go. Drop some chopped tomatoes on top of that and go to town, kid.” 

Tea wanted tomatoes. Coffee didn’t. Jesse put so many on his piece (which was noticeably larger than everyone else’s) that it was hard to see the eggs under it. All of them ate in single-minded silence and the only sound was the clatter of Hana’s fork and assorted claws on porcelain. 

The dragons each only managed one slice before they were so fat that Jesse wasn’t certain they could fly. They lay there like limp noodles, swollen bellies in the air, and the only signs of life were their high whistling breaths and the occasional moan. 

Hana was on her second piece and showed no signs of slowing, shoveling the food into her mouth at an alarming pace. Jesse nibbled a piece of sausage off his claw and watched, wondering who would win in a fight between her and a pack of hungry wolves. They both froze at the same time, Hana with her fork halfway to her mouth and Jesse with a finger stuck fully in his.

There were footsteps coming down the hall outside. 

“Plate! Quick!” Hana hissed and flung out her hand. Instantly a clean plate flew to it, along with a fork. She held them out to Jesse with a panicked expression and catching her drift, Jesse knifed out a massive portion of the breakfast scramble and deposited it. Hana nearly flung the plate towards the empty space at the island and only a quick flick of Jesse’s tail kept it from tumbling to the floor. 

They both watched the door. 

The footsteps grew closer, closer, and then stopped. The door slid open. Nobody moved.       

Master Wizard Shimada stood in the open doorway, but Jesse would have been hard pressed to recognize him if he’d had to. His hair was a wreck, mostly covering his eyes. Gone were the fancy, dramatic clothes, replaced by something that might have been a nice bathrobe if not for the fact that it was half dragging behind the bedraggled wizard. His sleeping pants were slung low on his hips and pooled over the tops of a pair of absolutely hideous slippers. 

“Somebody isn’t a morning person,” Jesse whispered and Hana kicked his leg. 

“Good morning, Master Shimada,” she said and Jesse could nearly taste the false cheerfulness in her voice. The wizard didn’t seem to notice though. He shuffled into the kitchen and down to the still-warm kettle, not seeming to notice the odd party at his kitchen island. Even the dragons woke up enough to watch as the man reached up and felt blindly around on the tall shelf until he found the tin of tea. Nobody spoke as he reheated the kettle with nothing more than a gesture, made up a tea ball, and dropped it into a cup of near-scalding water. 

“What is that smell?” He asked and Jesse winced. That was the rough, pained voice of a man with a hangover the size of a small country. He knew the sound well, seeing as it had come out of his throat more than a few times.

“Breakfast!” Hana said with a wide, slightly manic smile. “The manticore made it. We saved you some.” She flapped her hand at Jesse and he pushed the plate a couple inches closer to the wizard, half expecting to have a curse tossed at his paw. 

“There you go, Sunshine. It’ll cure what ails you.”  

The wizard squinted at him through the dark, tangled curtain of his hair. Jesse looked back. This was the make or break moment. 

One of the dragons burped. 

“...Thank you, McCree.” The wizard picked up the plate with his free hand and left, shuffling back out the door with his robe dragging behind him.

Hana and Jesse remembered how to breathe again.   

“That,” Hana released a long-held breath, “was close. I thought for sure he was going to set you on fire or something. Why’d he call you McCree?” She pulled her plate back in front of her again and applied herself to the last few bites. 

Probably ‘cause it’s my name,” Jesse mused, staring through the still-open door as he scratched his chin with his claws. “Only thing is, I don’t remember tellin’ him that.” 

“Wizards are weird,” Hana said with finality as she dropped her fork, plate spotless. “What’s for lunch?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You don't need a cleaning lady in a spotless castle! A cooking cat will have to do. Hope you guys enjoyed it and I apologize for any errors you come across.


End file.
